


A Lesson in Sociology

by fallintosanity (yopumpkinhead)



Series: Calamity's Waltz [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26552260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/fallintosanity
Summary: Noctis takes Rufus on a field trip to the Midgar slums.
Series: Calamity's Waltz [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930918
Comments: 72
Kudos: 205





	A Lesson in Sociology

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place a day or two before chapter 21 of _Providence_.
> 
> The original FFVII never gives an age for Rufus ShinRa, while the compilation novel _On The Way to a Smile_ puts his age at around twenty-four or twenty-five. (The Remake ages him up to 30, but as TFA and this series are based on original-game canon, we're ignoring that.) _Providence_ starts about five years before the OG, meaning Rufus is nineteen or twenty at this point in time.
> 
> This fic ended up being a little more relevant to modern-day American politics than I intended. But FFVII has always been a pointed commentary on a lot of modern social issues, so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised.

“Here,” Noctis said, and dumped a heavy paper grocery bag into Rufus’s arms. “Go put this on.” 

“What?” 

Noctis caught him by the elbow and steered him toward the back of the cafe and the keypad-locked bathroom door. “Just trust me. The door code is four-eight-six-two.” 

Rufus planted his feet, slowing Noctis down long enough for Rufus to get a look at him. It was two weeks since Rufus had tried to bribe Noctis with the custom sword, and the third time they’d met away from ShinRa headquarters after their late-night chat in Rufus’s office. Noctis normally wore loose-fitting, all-black clothes on these outings, his only ornament a subtle skull-and-crossbones pattern. Today, though, he wore a royal blue T-shirt printed with the words _I’D RATHER BE SLEEPING_ under a lighter blue track jacket, tight jeans with artful rips on the knees and thighs, and a billed cap bearing the logo of a Sector Four bar. He looked like the kind of slums punk the news was fond of panning over - deviant enough to titillate Upper Plate dwellers, young and attractive enough not to offend them. 

“What, exactly, are you planning?” Rufus asked him, not bothering to hide the suspicion in his voice. 

Noctis grinned, his eyes alight with mischief. They were far more blue than usual, thanks to the bright blue of his shirt and the dark lines around—

“Are you wearing _makeup?_ ” Rufus demanded. 

Noctis laughed and resumed shoving Rufus toward the bathroom. “Go change. I’ll explain on the way.” 

Rufus almost refused. He’d been meeting with Noctis in secret because, strange as the man was, he clearly knew a great deal about running a country. Rufus needed that knowledge if he was going to pull off his coup successfully, and he’d come today expecting to talk more about what Noctis had said about a king needing to walk among his people. Now, though, he suspected Noctis intended a more hands-on lesson. 

Tseng would _kill_ Rufus for doing something like that - wearing a disguise and going incognito among the people of Midgar. The risk was massive: ShinRa had many enemies both in and out of Midgar, and Tseng already wasn’t happy about allowing Rufus to talk privately with Noctis in public cafes while the Turks lurked outside. But at the same time… the thought of slipping Tseng’s ever-present watch sparked something in Rufus’s chest, something bright and rebellious and tantalizing. 

“Fine,” Rufus said. 

Noctis grinned and nudged him toward the bathroom again. “Four-eight-six-two,” he said. “Let me know when you’re changed so I can help with the finishing touches.” 

The cafe was in one of the nicer parts of Sector Five, so the bathroom was spacious and clean. Rufus set the bag on the sink and pulled out the bundle of clothes - and recoiled so hard he nearly dropped them. Horrified, he stuffed them back into the bag, yanked out his PHS, and snapped off a message to Noctis: _I’m not wearing that!_

The reply came just seconds later: _wuss_

Rufus glared at the screen, thumb hovering over the keys as he weighed his response. Halfway through typing _This is NOT suitable attire for a Vice President_ , the door rattled as someone punched in the code. Rufus was about to yell at whoever it was for barging in without knocking, when the door opened and Noctis slipped inside. He looked entirely too gleeful, unbothered by Rufus’s glare. 

“Scaredy-cat,” Noctis said in a singsong. “C’mon, Rufus, trust me.” 

“Those are - are—” Rufus broke off, too appalled to come up with words to describe them. 

Noctis dug in the bag and pulled out a neon pink T-shirt printed with black letters: BADASS WITH A NICE ASS. “Here,” he said, and shoved it at Rufus. Without waiting for a response, he started tugging at the buttons on Rufus’s suit jacket. 

“I fail to see how this is going to help me learn anything about running Midgar,” Rufus said, then before Noctis could speak, added, “I do understand you want me to mingle with the people, but this is—”

“Camouflage,” Noctis said easily. He wrestled Rufus’s jacket off, pausing for a moment to eye the underarm holster where Rufus kept his gun, then slung the jacket onto the purse hook on the bathroom door and pulled off Rufus’s tie. “If you go around looking like Vice President Rufus ShinRa, you’ll never see anything useful. Plus, you’ll be a target. But with this? No one will look twice at you.” 

“I’m reasonably certain this monstrosity of an outfit will have all eyes on me,” Rufus grumbled as he shrugged out of the holster. 

“On the _outfit_ ,” Noctis corrected him, and started on the buttons of Rufus’s shirt. “Not on _you_.” 

“You’re insane.” Rufus pushed Noctis’s hands away, dropped the hideous t-shirt in them, and finished removing his dress shirt himself. He was used to Tseng helping him get dressed - since Rufus was constantly in the public eye and under the scrutiny of ShinRa’s board of directors, all of whom considered him an inexperienced young upstart, he couldn’t afford to look anything but perfectly professional and mature at all times. But Tseng’s help felt much different than Noctis’s. Tseng was always coolly distant, like getting assistance from a robot, while Noctis was vibrant and alive and apparently entirely unconcerned with matters of propriety. 

Rufus pulled off his button-down and, reluctantly, his undershirt, then reached for the t-shirt in Noctis’s hands. It fit far more snugly to his body than anything he’d ever worn before, and he was abruptly grateful for the hours of exercise he put in every week to stay fit. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself for the next part. The t-shirt was bad; the pants were worse. 

“Are you sure these will even fit me?” he asked Noctis. 

“I hope so,” Noctis said, still annoyingly cheeky. “I got your measurements from Rude.” 

“You _what_.” 

“My best friend pulled that trick on me when we were teenagers and he wanted me to go to a costume party with him,” Noctis said. “Just put them on.” 

He turned away, giving Rufus a little bit of privacy to remove his suit pants. The jeans Noctis had provided could hardly be called such; they were more stretch fabric than denim, and fit even more tightly than the t-shirt. Certainly they made an effort to prove the veracity of the words on the t-shirt. Rufus felt unbearably exposed - he didn’t think he’d ever worn anything this form-fitting in his life. “I’m not going outside in this,” he told Noctis. 

“Sure you are.” Noctis turned back around, looking Rufus up and down with a critical eye. “But we have to finish the look first.” He fished a tube out of the bottom of the bag, squirted some kind of gel onto his hands, then stepped close. Before Rufus could protest, Noctis jammed his hands into Rufus’s hair, raking his fingers up and back. In the mirror over the sink, Rufus saw with horror that Noctis was destroying his carefully slick hairstyle in favor of a wild mess of spikes, not unlike Noctis’s own unruly hair. 

“Noctis—!” 

“There,” Noctis said. He stepped back and turned away to wash his hands in the sink, then pulled yet another tube out of the bag. This one was slim and dark, and the cap came off to reveal something that looked more like a pencil than a tube. “Hold really, really still.” 

There was nothing for it but to stand still while Noctis carefully outlined Rufus’s eyes in heavy black makeup, then ran a brush over his eyelashes and eyebrows to make them look twice as thick and dark. A pair of scuffed, calf-high combat boots with laces the same bright pink as the shirt, a clip-on hoop earring, and half a dozen leather and fabric bracelets completed the ensemble. When Noctis was finished, the man looking back at Rufus from the mirror looked nothing like ShinRa’s professional and respectable Vice President. 

Instead, he was faced with a sleek, glamorous slums punk. Without the bulk of his suit, he looked taller than usual, the tightness of the clothes emphasizing the length of his legs and torso. With his bangs in messy vertical spikes instead of artfully framing his face, his cheekbones stood out like knives. Noctis had done something with the eye makeup to subtly alter the shape of Rufus’s eyes, and the fake earring gave him a roguish air. The only thing ruining the look was the noticeable panic in his eyes. 

“Well, look at you!” Noctis crowed. He hooked an arm around Rufus’s shoulders, grinning at him in the mirror. 

“I look like an idiot,” Rufus muttered, though even to his own ears he didn’t sound convincing. In truth, he was quickly beginning to like the outfit, revealing as it was. As with the thought of slipping his Turk guard, the idea of wearing something that would send the entire ShinRa board into fits of horrified apoplexy lit something hot and tempting in his chest. And with Noctis beside him, wearing a similarly punk getup, he was confident he could brave being seen. 

Rufus took a deep, steadying breath. “What should we do with my clothes? We can hardly leave them in here.”

Noctis opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. “Um.” 

Rufus sighed.

“I knew I was forgetting something,” Noctis admitted, and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. 

Shaking his head, Rufus began to pack his suit into the paper bag. “We can make this work for now, I suppose.” He paused, considering the gun in its holster for a moment, before wrapping it in his shirt and settling it carefully into the bag. There was nowhere to conceal a weapon in the outfit he wore now, and anyway he had Noctis to protect him. His PHS went into the bag, too, tucked in the pocket of his suit jacket where Tseng wouldn’t be able to track him with it. “I take it your plan is to go down to the slums?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Many of the train stations have started installing lockers for rent,” Rufus said. “I signed off on the budget requests. We can use one of those.” 

“That’ll work,” Noctis agreed. He picked up the bag once Rufus was done packing it, and stuffed it under his arm. “C’mon, this is the fun part.” 

“Should I be concerned that you apparently have experience slipping Turk oversight?” Rufus asked as they left the bathroom. 

Noctis flashed him another of those mischievous grins. “I’m a SOLDIER, remember?” 

It wasn’t an answer - SOLDIERs weren’t trained in the kind of countersurveillance required to escape Turk notice - but then, Noctis’s path to SOLDIER had been unconventional. Rufus knew the man had secrets, like where he’d come from and why in Shiva’s name he knew so much about running a country. Tseng didn’t believe any of the limited information Noctis had written on his SOLDIER paperwork about being from a remote island village destroyed by monsters, but hadn’t been able to find anything to disprove the story, either. Rufus had his own suspicions, as well as a half-formed plan to draw Noctis’s secrets out during their discussions, and he filed this little tidbit away with all the rest of the things Noctis had let slip. 

Noctis didn’t head back into the main dining area of the cafe, but turned down a narrow corridor threading through the back of the building behind the kitchen. Rufus had his mouth open to point out that leaving via the employee entrance was a rookie trick and Rude would spot them, when Noctis stopped beneath a small window set high in the wall. Handing the paper bag to Rufus, he glanced around for any employees, then stood on his toes to open the window. Gripping the sill, he hauled himself up and wiggled through with catlike ease. There was a soft thump of boots hitting the ground outside, then Noctis’s hand waved over the sill. “Pass me the bag,” he said. 

Rufus did as instructed, then climbed through the window. It opened into a claustrophobic alley between the cafe and the next building over, walled in on three sides with a ten-foot-high locked gate on the fourth. Noctis passed the bag back to Rufus and began scaling the wall, pulling himself back up to the window first, then leaning dangerously across the narrow alley to grip the sill of a second-floor window on the other side. Rufus tossed the bag up to him and Noctis chucked it onto the other building’s roof, then pulled himself up after it.

Rufus followed him, making sure to stay low to avoid catching the attention of anyone on the streets to either side. Climbing in the skintight pants and heavy boots wasn’t as bad as he’d feared - as much as the fabric’s stretch left nothing about his lower body to the imagination, it also gave him plenty of flexibility as he scrambled up the wall. Once he reached the roof, Noctis led him to the other side of the second building, across a heart-stopping jump over another narrow alley, and finally down a fire escape on the far side of a third building. They emerged onto the bustling streets of Sector Five and quickly lost themselves in the crowd. 

“Tseng is going to _kill_ me,” Rufus said, though he didn’t bother to hide how exciting he found the thought. He appreciated Tseng and the rest of the Turks - they had foiled more than one assassination attempt, and were often the only genuine support he had inside his father’s company - but he would readily admit their protectiveness could be stifling. Besides, it wasn’t as though Rufus was going entirely without a bodyguard. Noctis _was_ a SOLDIER Second Class. 

Noctis grinned back. “Ignis always hated it when I snuck out. But he always came with me anyway.” 

Noctis had mentioned this Ignis person before, calling him a brother. Yet another bit of information to file away in Rufus’s mind. “Did you ever get in trouble for sneaking out?” 

“Sometimes,” Noctis admitted. “Ignis took the blame a lot. But I took the fall for Iris once, so…” He shrugged. “We were stupid kids.” 

There was a melancholy note in his voice, as though these were painful memories. If he’d told the truth about his home being destroyed by monsters, it was no wonder. “All children are stupid,” Rufus said. He wasn’t sure if it was comforting, but he wasn’t entirely sure what to say in the face of Noctis’s quiet sadness. 

Noctis’s mouth twisted in a rueful smirk. “Yeah. Hey, there’s the station.” 

The next train was about to depart, so they quickly stuffed the bag with Rufus’s clothes, gun, and PHS into a locker, bought tickets, and boarded. They both had ShinRa-issued passes that allowed them to ride any public transportation anywhere in Midgar for free, but using those passes would alert the Turks to their location, so Noctis paid cash for both the locker and the tickets. It was the middle of a weekday and the train was only half-full, and Rufus was pleased to see that Noctis had been right about the outrageous clothes being camouflage. He spotted a number of people looking at him as they moved on or off the train, but they didn’t stare at his face in a combination of awe and fear as people did when he was Rufus ShinRa. Instead, they glanced at his shirt - and sometimes his ass - then away again, clearly dismissing him and Noctis both as delinquents. 

By the time the train pulled in at the Sector Seven slums station, Rufus felt more comfortable in the ridiculous clothes, enough that he didn’t hesitate to follow Noctis away from the station and into the bustling slum. The hardest part, then, was remembering not to gawk. He knew about the slums from the reports generated by the Turks and ShinRa’s Urban Development department, had watched the carefully-edited news broadcasts, had seen photos attached to descriptions of this or that project gone awry. But Rufus had never visited the slums himself. 

He’d been expecting squalor and ruin, and certainly there was plenty of that. The streets - if “streets” could be used to describe the twisted, haphazard paths which wound around teetering buildings - were made of packed dirt topped with dust or mud. Piles of trash and puddles of suspicious-looking liquids had built up along the edges of the streets, and frequently stretched out far enough that Rufus had to keep half an eye on where he was placing his feet. The buildings were mostly cobbled together from scrap, their sides uneven, their roofs askew. Rust covered much of the metal, rot had eaten through half the wood, and sharp edges jutted out everywhere. What little sunlight filtered down past the claustrophobic combination of the city’s outer wall and the Sector Seven plate overhead struggled to pierce the haze of smoke and dust that hung in the air, creating a gloomy atmosphere.

Despite the mess, though, the shantytown was packed with people, as much as any Upper Midgar shopping district. People lounged in rickety old cafe chairs, on benches, or simply on the filthy ground, chatting. Merchants leaned out of slapdash market stalls, shouting at passers-by. Rich, inviting food scents warred with the stench of offal and human waste, and people waited for the vendors in lines three or four deep. More people bustled past, clearly on their way to someplace or other, their heads down as they bulled through the hubbub. 

Noctis led Rufus along a seemingly random route through it all, occasionally pausing to greet one of the vendors - he’d clearly come down here before. At one stall, he bought a paper bag full of sticky sweet buns for the two of them to share; at another, long kebabs stacked with meat of questionable origin but delicious flavor. He even stopped to pet a scruffy mongrel dog which bounded up to him and licked his face enthusiastically, though he nearly lost his kebab skewer in the process. “This is Scrappy,” Noctis told Rufus when he managed to extricate himself. “She doesn’t look like much, but she pretty much single-handedly keeps this area clear of minor monsters.” 

Rufus extended a hand for Scrappy to sniff. He’d recently gotten a puppy of his own, a carefully-crafted, genetically-enhanced guard dog from the Science Department, and had started training him to respond to simple commands. “Sit,” he told Scrappy. She wiggled for a moment, then plonked down ungracefully; Darkstar’s trainer would have docked her for the extra movement but Rufus thought it was kind of cute on the mutt. He pulled the last piece of meat off his own kebab and tossed it to her. She snapped it out of the air with startling speed, then made a happy little whuffing sound as she swallowed it. 

Rufus petted her between the ears, then stood to follow Noctis again, absently pulling a sweet bun out of the bag. “I didn’t expect it to be so…” He waved a hand vaguely. 

“Yeah,” Noctis said softly. He took a couple more steps, his gaze distant. Rufus waited; he was quickly learning that sometimes Noctis needed space to say what was on his mind. Sure enough, a minute later Noctis added, “It’s easy to forget, living up there—” He waved a hand vaguely overhead to indicate the Sector Seven plate and the shining example of ShinRa-funded civilization it held. “That it’s not the only way to live. Thousands of people get by just fine every day without all the things we consider necessities. Where I grew up, I…” 

He hesitated. This pause was different, cautious rather than thoughtful, and after a moment Rufus took a calculated risk: “You were like me. In a position of power, above it all.” 

Noctis flicked him a glance from under his bangs and didn’t answer right away. Rufus waited again, absently snagging a sweet bun from the bag and popping it in his mouth. Finally Noctis admitted, “Yeah. And when I left home and really started traveling around the country, I saw…” He shook his head. “It was like coming from the upper city down here. But everyone I met along the way… They aren’t any less people than you or I. They have families. Friends. Homes. Lives. The only difference is that we got lucky - we were born into power. They weren’t.” 

“My father says otherwise,” Rufus said. “He built the ShinRa Electric Power Company single-handedly. Why can’t any of these people do the same?” 

That got him a skeptical eyebrow lift from Noctis. “You believe everything your dad tells you?” 

Rufus scowled. “Is he wrong? ShinRa offers excellent salaries to its employees, and a wealth of benefits. Most employers in the upper city do, as well. If someone lives down here, it’s because they _want_ to.”

Noctis scoffed. “You really think it’s that easy? Just because ShinRa—”

Silver glinted directly behind Noctis, a sharp point driving for his back, and Rufus lunged to shove Noctis out of the way - but he wasn’t fast enough. Noctis grunted and staggered as whatever it was hit him from behind. Rufus reached for his gun, came up empty, and froze in a way that would’ve earned him a week’s worth of extra training from Tseng— 

“Sorry, mister!” a high voice called anxiously. 

Noctis caught his balance and turned around. For the first time, Rufus registered the attacker: a child, maybe seven or eight years old, holding a soft scrap of wood haphazardly spray-painted silver. Another child, a few years older with a wider plank strapped to her arm like a shield, grabbed the first and yanked him away from Noctis and Rufus. “Sorry!” she repeated. 

“It’s okay,” Noctis said easily. 

“SOLDIERs don’t apologize!” the first child scolded the second.

Rufus felt his eyebrows climb to his overly-gelled hairline. The children were as scruffy and underfed as the dog Scrappy, their cheeks smudged with dirt and sweat, their ill-fitting clothes grimy and stained. “SOLDIERs?” he echoed. 

“Yeah!” the boy said. “I’m a SOLDIER!” He waved his makeshift sword overhead, forcing Noctis to take a quick step backward to avoid the flailing point. 

“Me too!” the girl added. 

“No you’re not!” the boy snapped. “SOLDIERs don’t apologize, and they don’t use shields!”

“Why not?” the girl demanded. She brandished her plank. “Mama says a good defense is the best offense!” 

The boy stuck out his tongue. “SOLDIERs only use swords! Sephiroth an’ Genesis an’ Cloud all have swords!” 

The girl’s lower lip quivered. Before she could say anything, though, Noctis cut in. “A SOLDIER can use a shield if she wants. I know someone who fights with shields.” Rufus carefully kept his mouth shut, but added that to his mental Noctis file. 

The girl’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Uh-huh,” Noctis said. “I can teach you a trick he taught me, if you want.” 

“Yeah!” The girl bounced with excitement, while her companion pouted. 

Noctis handed the bag of sweet buns to Rufus, then stepped behind her, gently positioning her arms to hold the shield correctly. “Using a shield’s all about turning your enemy’s movements against them,” he said, then motioned to the boy. “Try to attack.” 

The boy did so, winding up for a big overhead swing. Noctis steered the girl through catching and deflecting the attack with her shield in a way that sent the boy stumbling off-balance past her. “And then,” Noctis added, “you take their legs out from under them.” He mimed an exaggerated kick to the back of the boy’s knees. The boy obligingly collapsed to the dirt, and Noctis showed the girl how to stand above him with the edge of her shield at his throat. 

“That’s so cool!” the girl said. She hopped back, letting the boy regain his feet, and motioned for him to attack her again. 

Noctis stepped out of the way as the kids tried the maneuver a couple of times. He had a soft smile on his face as he watched them, and Rufus slipped closer to say quietly, “You’re a good teacher.”

“I _had_ a good teacher,” Noctis said. The girl successfully knocked her friend down again, and Noctis clapped. “Nice work!” 

“Thanks!” The girl grinned as she helped the boy up - then the grin turned mischievous, and she swung the shield at his head like a club. 

Giggling, the boy dodged and took off running down the street. “Thanks, mister!” he called over his shoulder. They were gone in moments, lost to the twisting maze of streets. 

“Does that happen often?” Rufus asked. “Getting accosted by slums children?” 

Noctis shrugged and grabbed one of the remaining sweet buns out of the bag. “More often, they’re pickpockets after your wallet. I learned that one the hard way. But these were just kids.” 

“Hmph.” Rufus shook his head, letting it go. There was one bun left in the bag; he ate it, then crumpled the bag and looked around for a trash bin. Unlike in Upper Midgar, there weren’t public bins on every block, and he finally resorted to swerving in between a couple of rickety cafe tables to lob the crumpled bag into an overflowing basket beside the shop’s counter. When he rejoined Noctis, he said, “Why don’t you think slums dwellers could make it in Upper Midgar if they really wanted to?” 

Noctis blinked a few times, visibly recalibrating back into the conversation they’d been having before the kids interrupted. “Right,” he said. “Come on, let me show you something.” He led Rufus back out of the narrower side alleys and onto what passed for a main boulevard down here. Buildings packed close on either side of the wide dirt road, leaning drunkenly against their neighbors as if holding each other up. Noctis chose one that didn’t look much different from the others, except for a hand-painted sign over the door that read “FIFTH WHEEL”. 

Inside, the place was clearly a bar. Heavy wooden tables crowded the small space, butting right up against a pool table in the corner and the long, polished surface of the bar top. Only a few of the tables were occupied in the middle of the afternoon, though Rufus was surprised to see that the women seated at one table all wore the uniform of ShinRa’s janitors. At another table, a man in a business suit drank alone, flipping through a pile of papers on ShinRa letterhead. A third table held a group of burly thugs wearing ragged jeans and leather vests studded with metal spikes, huddled close and talking in low voices. 

Noctis led Rufus past all of them to take a seat at the bar. “Hey,” he said to the bartender, a handsome woman who could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty.

“Welcome back, pretty boy.” She flashed him a cheerful grin, then gave Rufus a once-over. “Who’s your friend?”

“My cousin,” Noctis lied. “He’s visiting from Junon.” 

“Oh,” the bartender drawled, and this time her gaze lingered as she looked Rufus over more closely. “They really do make ‘em pretty in the south.” 

To his surprise, Rufus felt a blush burning his cheeks. He’d almost forgotten how revealing his outfit was, but the bartender’s gaze served as a very pointed reminder. Thankfully, Noctis said, “C’mon, Belia, he’s new to the big city. Be nice.” 

Belia’s eyes drifted down the front of Rufus’s body, as low as she could see with the bar top in between them. “I’d be happy to show him how _nice_ Midgar folk can be,” she said, then laughed. “Oh, darlin’, you blush so pretty. Relax, I’m not after your virtue. ShinRa’s offices shut down in an hour - I got a lot of prep to do before that crowd gets here.” 

Still flustered by her open appraisal, Rufus almost missed what she’d said. “Wait. A ShinRa crowd?” 

“Yep.” Belia set a pair of full beer glasses in front of him and Noctis. “Business folk spend all day being uptight and proper in meetings. They come here to unwind a bit before heading home.” 

“That’s… a long way to go to unwind,” Rufus said. Then he realized Noctis was giving him a look from under his bangs. “They live here?” 

Belia laughed again, but this time there was nothing flirtatious about it. “You really aren’t from here, are you, darlin’? Half ShinRa’s employees live in the slums.” 

“No they don’t,” Rufus protested. “ShinRa has an extensive corporate housing program.” He barely resisted adding, _I should know, I handle the budget for it every year._ He made himself take a sip from the beer glass, instead. 

“Good on them,” Belia said dryly, “but not many folk qualify for it. You gotta be this or that employee level, meet all these real specific criteria. Not to mention all the contractors - the janitors, the cafeteria workers, the repair people, everyone who works in the background to keep that big pretty tower in working order.” 

Rufus couldn’t help but glance over at the table where the women in the janitors’ uniforms sat. They all looked back at him, clearly listening in to the conversation. One of them said, “Most of the suits don’t even think we’re people. You really think they’d give us _houses_?” 

“Besides,” another woman added, “like Bel said, we’re contractors. I don’t know how they do things in Junon, but here, ShinRa outsources all the shit jobs to contracting companies so they don’t have to pay us or give us benefits or anything.” 

Which… was true. Rufus also handled most of the contracting companies’ contracts, and he knew how the bidding process worked: whoever had the lowest bid for the job got it. He’d never given much thought to how things worked past that. Contractors made their bids and provided their workers, and unless a company’s workers were too low-quality, everyone was happy. 

He could feel Noctis’s eyes boring into the side of his head. 

“Then why not get other jobs?” he asked the women. “If you don’t like yours, why not leave?” 

The table burst into uproarious, mocking laughter. “Leave,” one of the women repeated, and stuck her pinky in the air in a parody of upper-plate manners, which made her friends laugh all over again. “Leave and go where? I got three kids, a husband who makes half what I do working as a security guard in a Platie mall, and no fancy education. The company still pays better’n what I’d get anywhere else.” 

Rufus bit his tongue as the women kept talking, mocking his words with a degree of bitterness bordering on vitriol. “Don’t take it personally,” Belia said softly from behind him. He turned back around to see her giving him a faint, sad smile. “Their company laid off a bunch of folk recently. With the price of mako energy going up again, most companies are tightening their belts, but they already run on real thin margins. There’s always another round of layoffs when contract renewals come up, and if any of ‘em lose their jobs…” 

“I see,” Rufus said quietly. Budget spreadsheets and accountants’ reports flashed through his memory: neat numbers in boxes. A lower bid here meant a lower budget request for the quarter, meaning a better return for the company board, meaning more respect for its youngest member who only had a seat there because his father was the president. 

It wasn’t as though Rufus hadn’t known, on some level, that those numbers represented real people - but this was exactly why he’d chosen the iron-fisted path he had. Mako energy was not an infinite resource, and Rufus’s father was only interested in it inasmuch as it was a money-generating machine funding his search for the Ancients' mythical Promised Land. The second he found it - or something near enough to it that he could delude himself into believing it was - he planned to abandon Midgar and retire in paradise. Rufus had to be ready to inherit a city on the edge of realizing its leader’s promises were a lie. 

Noctis’s words from their meeting in Rufus’s office last week rang through his mind: _The slums have their own militias, and only haven’t risen up because they haven’t been pushed far enough yet. But they’re close._

He’d planned to push the contractors’ bids down further this year, both to free up some additional funds for his own coup, and to remind the companies exactly who owned Midgar. But if what Belia said was true… he might be putting these women out of a job. And if _all_ the contractors were likewise lowering costs, they’d have nowhere else to go. 

Except into the slums militia, and straight into the uprising Rufus needed to avoid at all costs. 

Shiva’s breath, Noctis was right. Midgar was far closer to war than he’d realized. Far closer than it could afford. Rufus took a drink of his beer absently, his thoughts racing. He could fix this, but not overnight. Even if the board would let him - which they wouldn’t; he’d have to maneuver carefully to avoid drawing their attention - there was no one singular, grand gesture he could make that would undo the desperation that had been building up in the slums for longer than Rufus had been alive. 

Just as importantly, he needed to reassess his support structure. Tseng and the Turks had been incredibly useful to him, but they also hadn’t told him about any of this. He knew Tseng too well to believe Tseng wasn’t aware of it, which meant Tseng had kept it from him deliberately. That would be an even thornier problem than the ShinRa board of directors. Rufus _also_ knew Tseng well enough to trust that his support was genuine - it was just that Tseng was a Turk first and foremost, trained under the legendary Verdot. But the Turk way wasn’t what Midgar needed right now. 

Rufus downed the rest of his beer in one long pull. He needed to think this through. Carefully and thoroughly and without either Tseng or Noctis sitting on his shoulders tugging him in one direction or the other. Catching Noctis’s eye, he made a slight movement of his head toward the exit. Thankfully, Noctis nodded, pulled a wad of bills from a pocket, and dropped a few on the bar. 

“Thanks,” he said to Belia, “but I better get this guy home. It was a long trip from Junon and he’s pretty worn out.” 

“I’d believe that,” she said, and turned to Rufus, cheerfully flirtatious once more. “You come back again sometime, you hear? I may not get to travel much, but I do like me the southern view.” She winked, lascivious enough that Rufus felt himself blushing again. He ducked his head and hurried after Noctis out the door. 

“Changes things, doesn’t it, Ru,” Noctis said as they turned down a side street back toward the train station. 

Rufus had his mouth open to agree, but stopped short. “Don’t call me that.” 

“Okay,” Noctis said easily. “Not a fan of nicknames?” 

“No,” Rufus muttered. “How would you like it if people only called you by half your name?” 

“Actually, all my friends call me Noct,” Noctis said with a shrug. “My whole name is too formal.”

Given how much of a mouthful his whole name was, Rufus could understand that. “I prefer the formality,” Rufus said. “Most of the board thinks—” 

Noctis stopped short, so abruptly that Rufus nearly ran into him. Distracted by both the nicknames discussion and the thoughts still buzzing through his mind about how to pull Midgar back from its precipice, Rufus hadn’t noticed the group of burly young men blocking their path. With a start, he realized it was the same group of metal-studded thugs from the bar - except now they were holding weapons. Knives for three of them, which Rufus could deal with easily enough, but a gun in the hands of the last two. 

“Come along nice and quiet,” said one of the thugs with a gun. “No screaming or nothin’. Don’t want to scare the kids, eh?” He tilted his head to the side; Rufus didn’t dare turn to look but he could hear children calling and laughing somewhere nearby. From the corner of his eye he could see Noctis practically vibrating with tension, but Noctis wasn’t making a move— 

—and abruptly Rufus realized that Noctis wasn’t carrying a weapon, either. _Idiot_ , he chided himself. Noctis might be a SOLDIER Second, but without a weapon he wouldn’t be able to do much in a fight. And Rufus’s own gun was in a locker in the Sector Five train station, which might as well have been the moon for all the good it would do him now. 

_If I survive this,_ Rufus thought grimly, _Tseng is going to_ kill _me._

The thugs circled around him and Noctis, herding them off the street and through a narrow gap between buildings. They emerged into a sort of hollowed-out yard in the middle of ten-foot-high hills of dirt and scrap. The sounds of the streets were muffled back here, and the dirt underfoot was caked with suspicious stains. Clearly they weren’t the first people these thugs had brought back here. 

“What do you want?” Rufus asked. “Money?” 

The gun-toting thug who’d spoken before laughed. “We don’t want your money, ShinRa shill,” he spat, and Rufus’s heart stopped for a second before he realized the man hadn’t actually recognized him. Not quite, at least. “We don’t need your kind down here.” 

“Shill?” Noctis repeated, sounding surprised. 

“Too fancy a word for ya?” one of the knife-wielders sneered. “Means patsy. Stoolie. Rat fink. They’re payin’ ya to come down here and talk up ShinRa, try to convince people those fuckers are actually good for anything other than steppin’ on us.”

Rufus raised both hands in a pacifying gesture. “We really, really aren’t,” he promised.

“Everyone knows the Turks pay people to talk up ShinRa,” the vocal gun thug said. “You two show up tellin’ people to just get new jobs if they don’t like ShinRa? What else could you be?” 

Noctis made a slight movement with one hand: a SOLDIER signal. Rufus held his hands out wider, stepping slightly to the side and away from him, drawing the thugs’ attention to himself. “If we _are_ ShinRa shills,” he said, “what makes you think ShinRa won’t retaliate against you for harming us?” 

One of the other knife-wielders scoffed. “You ain’t the first ones we’ve taken care of.”

 _That_ was ominous, but also a matter to take up with Tseng later. Rufus took another careful step sideways, forcing one of the gun thugs to turn in order to keep his weapon pointed at Rufus, and suddenly Noctis lunged forward, in between the two gun thugs. The one who’d had his gun on Noctis cursed, unable to shoot without risking a hit on his friend, and Noctis used the opportunity to slam the blade of his hand down on the other thug’s wrist. 

Rufus dove to the side and forward as the gun went off, and slid beneath the thug’s arm as he dropped the gun from the pain of Noctis’s blow. Rufus caught the gun and shot the closest knife-wielder as he rolled to his feet. Another gunshot rang out and fire blossomed in a sharp line along Rufus’s bicep; he darted behind another of the knife-wielders in time to avoid a third shot.

Rufus pressed his stolen gun into the knife-wielder’s back. “Don’t move,” he growled, and the big man froze, giving Rufus a moment of breathing room to assess the situation.

The second gun-toting thug was pointing his weapon at Noctis, who was holding the last thug’s knife in a combat stance. The knife’s previous owner lay on the ground, unconscious or dead, as did the thug Rufus had shot. The other, now ex-gun-wielder, was whimpering and clutching his knee, which looked like it had been kicked in sideways. The remaining gun thug’s eyes flicked between Rufus and Noctis. “You two’re better trained than the last ones we killed.” 

“You can still walk away,” Noctis said. “You don’t have to do this.” 

“You’re going to let them walk away?” Rufus asked Noctis, startled. “They tried to kill us!” 

“You ain’t _lettin’_ us do anything!” the gun thug snapped. “And we’re still gonna kill you!” 

Noctis looked briefly exasperated. “No, you’re not,” he said to the thug, then to Rufus, “They’re just looking out for their community. I’m not going to kill them.” 

The gun thug shot him an annoyed glare. “Stop talking like we ain’t here!” 

“I’m trying to save your life!” Noctis snapped back. “You don’t want to pick this—”

The knife thug on the ground at Noctis’s feet suddenly moved. Rufus opened his mouth to yell a warning - but at the same time, the thug he was holding at gunpoint spun around, knocking Rufus’s gun aside and driving a fist into his gut. Rufus folded, gasping, and struggled to point the gun up at his attacker, but the man punched him in the arm where the bullet had grazed him earlier. Pain spasmed through his arm and he lost his grip on the gun.

A shot rang out somewhere across the yard. An unfamiliar voice cried out and Noctis grunted; from the corner of his eye Rufus saw Noctis rolling to his feet on the other side of the yard. Metal gleamed overhead, yanking his attention back to his own fight, and Rufus flung himself to the side, barely avoiding a slash from his opponent’s knife. 

The thug followed him, staying too close, preventing him from catching his balance. Rufus dodged another swing but, already off-balance, tripped on the uneven ground and landed on his ass with a grunt. The knife thug loomed over him, feet on either side of Rufus’s legs, trapping him. The thug grinned viciously as he raised his knife. 

“Rufus!” Noctis yelled from somewhere across the yard. Too far to help. 

_Tseng’s going to kill me_ , Rufus thought hysterically. 

The thug swung the knife. Rufus threw his arms up, uselessly— 

A sound like an electric zap, then a grunt of pain. Rufus looked up to see Noctis standing over him, holding off the thug’s knife arm with his crossed forearms, flickers of blue magic outlining him for an instant before fading. A Haste materia? Was that how he’d gotten across the whole yard so quickly? 

Not that that mattered right now. Rufus shoved himself out from beneath them, looking around frantically for the gun he’d dropped. The thug was twice Noctis’s size and had all the leverage; already he’d nearly bent Noctis over backward. 

Then a child’s voice yelled, “Hey, mister!” 

Noctis hooked a foot in between the knife thug’s legs and twisted, and at the same time something small but fast slammed into the thug’s knees from behind. The thug staggered, and with a grunt of effort, Noctis flung him to the ground. The gun came skittering across the dirt toward Rufus, and he snatched it up, lunged to his feet, and pointed it at the thug’s head. “Let’s try this again,” he snarled. “Don’t. Move.” 

The thug froze, though he glared mutinously up at Rufus. On his other side, holding her little wooden shield, was the young girl from earlier. She’d been the one to charge the thug, throwing him off-balance enough that Noctis could take him down. Her friend stood nearby, having kicked the gun to Rufus. He held his painted wooden sword at the ready, glaring at the thugs. 

Across the yard, the last thug groaned where he was sprawled in the dirt. Blood dripped from a wound in his shoulder as he struggled to push himself up. Noctis left the knife thug to Rufus and crossed over to the last thug, picking up the man’s fallen gun along the way. He checked its clip, then pointed it at the last thug. “We done here?” 

The thug glared. With his free hand, Rufus motioned for the children to get behind him, just in case the man tried anything. They complied, the boy sticking his tongue out at the thugs as he moved. Thankfully, neither of the thugs seemed inclined to continue fighting; the one Noctis had spoken to gave a reluctant nod. 

The other thugs were just beginning to stir, and Rufus jerked his chin at them. “Get your friends and get out of here,” he ordered the thug who seemed to be the leader. “Don’t come back.”

Still glaring, the two conscious thugs got to their feet, grabbed their friends, and hurried out of the back lot. The one Rufus had shot was bleeding from a wound in his leg, the one whose gun Noctis had knocked away was still clutching at his broken knee, and the one who’d tried to attack them from the ground had a vicious bruise blossoming along his jaw in the shape of Noctis’s boot. Together with the one Noctis had shot in the shoulder and the one who’d been knocked down by a ten-year-old with a toy shield, they made a sorry sight as they limped away. Noctis and Rufus kept their guns on them until they were gone. 

“Wow,” the boy said breathlessly as Noctis strode over and handed a handkerchief to Rufus. Rufus had no idea where he’d gotten it from, but it was enough to dab the blood off his bicep where the bullet had grazed him. It wasn’t a bad wound - little more than a scratch, and it hurt worse from being punched than it did from the graze itself. As long as Rufus wore long sleeves for a week or so, Tseng would never even notice it.

The boy waved his sword overhead, forcing Noctis to step back again. “That was _so cool!_ ” he exclaimed.

“Are you guys SOLDIERs?” the girl asked. She was staring up at them with wide, impressed eyes.

Rufus couldn’t help but smile. “No,” he said. “We aren’t anyone special.” 

“You’re like the heroes in the stories Grandpa tells,” the boy said, and slashed the air with his sword to illustrate. 

Noctis ruffled the kid’s hair with a grin. “Couldn’t have done it without you two,” he said. “Thanks for the save.” Then he flicked a pointed glance at Rufus.

In the middle of tying the handkerchief around his arm to stave off further bleeding, Rufus frowned back, not sure what Noctis was after. Finally Noctis said, in a voice that managed to be both exasperated and patient at the same time, “They helped us. You should thank them.” 

Rufus opened his mouth and closed it again, biting back the reflexive _Don’t tell me what to do._ By coming down here, by agreeing to listen to Noctis at all, he’d also agreed to follow the man’s lead. He met the children’s eyes. “Thank you.” 

It came out stiff - Rufus was not in the habit of thanking people - but the kids didn’t seem to notice. “No problem!” the girl said. 

“It was fun!” the boy added. 

“Keep practicing like that and you’ll both be shoo-ins for SOLDIER when you’re older,” Noctis said. He ruffled the boy’s hair again, then patted the girl’s shoulder. “We need to get going, though.”

The boy pouted. “Aww,” he said. “Will you come back sometime?” 

Noctis raised an eyebrow at Rufus from behind his bangs, a smirk dancing on his mouth that said he knew full well what answering that would mean. Rufus resisted the urge to make a face back, and said to the boy, “Maybe. If you’re good, and train hard.” 

“Woohoo!” The boy pumped his fist in the air, and the girl cheered. Noctis waved to them and they ran off, waving back with cheerful enthusiasum until they vanished along the narrow path back to the street. 

Once they were out of sight, Noctis held out a hand for the gun Rufus still held. “Here, we shouldn’t carry these around.” 

Rufus let him take the gun. “What are you going to do with them?” 

Noctis headed over to the piles of scrap that formed the walls of the little lot and began burrowing into the junk. “I’ll come back for them later, when I can bring a bag to carry them in,” he said over his shoulder. 

It was good enough for now, at least. Rufus shrugged, and when Noctis finished hiding the guns, fell into step beside him as they made their way back through the tunnel. 

Noctis checked the street as they emerged, in case the thugs had decided to go for another round after all, but no one was lying in wait for them. Foot traffic had picked up in general, though, and Rufus had to stay close on Noctis’s heels to avoid getting separated in the crowd. As Belia had said back in the bar, a lot of the people walking around wore suits or ShinRa service uniforms, and Rufus even spotted a couple middle managers he recognized. Thank Shiva, no one seemed to recognize _him_ \- if anyone even bothered to glance at him and Noctis, their eyes skipped right back off the dusty, bruised punks who’d clearly just been in a fight. 

“Stars,” Noctis teased as they walked. “You were making me feel like my old nanny back there.” At Rufus’s raised eyebrow, he added in a falsetto with a clipped accent, “Say _please_ and _thank you_ , Noctis.” 

Rufus rolled his eyes. “If I thanked anyone in upper management, they’d take it to mean I owe them a favor. I learned that the hard way.” 

Noctis rolled his eyes back, though the gesture seemed more aimed at the upper managers than Rufus. “This is why you don’t run a country like a company,” he muttered, half under his breath. 

“Some of us have _only_ learned to run a company,” Rufus pointed out testily. 

“That’s why you’re here, right?” Noctis said, and bumped his shoulder against Rufus’s. 

“I suppose,” Rufus admitted. He didn’t quite know how to process that - Noctis all but admitting outright to knowing how to run a country, and ten seconds later, shoulder-bumping Rufus like a common-born high-schooler. But then, everything about Noctis was a contradiction: a SOLDIER’s fighting skill without the effects of the mako treatments. Regal enough for a more diplomatic encounter with Lord Godo of Wutai than anything ShinRa had managed since the war began, yet punk enough to fit seamlessly into the slums. Devoted to his family, yet seeming completely uninterested in finding them. 

Rufus didn’t realize he was staring until Noctis said, “What?” 

“Nothing,” Rufus said. He hesitated, weighing the risks. If he was honest with himself, today was more fun than he’d had in _years_ \- attempted murder included. Whatever Noctis wanted from him - and he had to want something; no one befriended the heir to ShinRa unless they wanted something - he wasn’t pushing for it, and some small part of Rufus wanted to believe that maybe, _maybe_ Noctis really _didn’t_ want anything from him. 

It was dangerous for the heir to ShinRa to have a friend. But all of the little pieces of Noctis that he’d seen, even with all the gaps and evasions and half-answers, said that perhaps Noctis was the only other person in the world who knew exactly, intimately, what that was like. 

Noctis was still watching him from under his bangs, his stormcloud eyes thoughtful. Rufus said, “Next time we come down here, we should go back to that place with the sweet rolls.” And then, as casually as he could, added, “Right, Noct?” 

Noct grinned, bright as the dawn breaking over the horizon. “Definitely,” he agreed, and clapped Rufus on the back hard enough that he staggered.

Rufus swatted him back. “Just… don’t call me Ru where anyone else can hear, okay?” 

“Deal.” 

* * *

The train up from the slums back to Sector Five was nearly empty; most of the crowd was going in the other direction. They got back to the station in the last glow of twilight, laughing over a story from Rufus’s school days as they stepped out onto the platform. 

Only to freeze when they saw Reno and Rude standing side by side near the stairs, Rude carrying the paper bag with Rufus’s clothes tucked under one arm. 

“Busted,” Noctis groaned under his breath.

Rufus nudged his arm, turning him toward the other end of the platform with hopefully enough nonchalance that, combined with their disguises, the Turks wouldn’t recognize them. They hurried, not quite running, down the steps and toward the station’s far exit— 

“Vice President ShinRa,” Tseng said, stepping out of a darkened doorway. His face was impassive, but his eyes flicked up and down Rufus’s body, taking in the clothes, the makeup, the bloodstained handkerchief tied around his arm. “Care to explain?” 


End file.
